2) The Transitional Program

The defeat suffered by the Palestinian Resistance Movement in September 1970 and in the following battles, led to the elimination of its open existence in Jordan and motivated within the ranks of the DFLP a complete, open and critical review of its own policy as well as of the general policy of resistance in Jordan. The DFLP faced the deep and complicated realities of the Palestinian Jordanian relationship, in particular the regional division within Jordanian society. The roots of this division are based on the unique position Jordan occupies within the map of imperialist interests in the region, and the role it plays in its confiscation of the Palestinian peoples' right to self determination and their independent expression of their national identity.

This critical review marked the beginning of the stage of the formation of the program that embraced the "right of return, right of self determination, and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967, with Jerusalem as its capital." This is the transitional program (also known as the program of stages), which in reality represented the reformulation of Palestinian political thinking, which at that time had concentrated around the two fold contradiction between "resistance" and "accords", as well as between "armed struggle" and "peaceful solutions."

Although it came as a general plan in this context, the call of the DFLP for the Palestine National Council, in its ninth session (July 1971), to set up a safe, liberated support base in the occupied territories, was intended to maintain the continuity of the Palestinian revolution until it achieved its goals. The work of the first General National Conference of the Front (November 1971) deepened discussions around this topic. The Fourth meeting of the Central Committee (August 1973) formulated the elements of the transitional program, and confirmed it officially, through a document entitled "Ten themes about the general guidelines of the transitional program in the occupied lands and Jordan." It should also be noted that this program presented, for the first time, the idea of the popular uprising (Intifada), regarding it as the most distinctive form of a war of the people, possible within the special conditions of the Palestinian struggle.

These themes became even more tangible in the declaration issued by the October 1973 meeting of the extended Central Committee, immediately after the October War, which led to partial improvements in the Arab balance of power in relation to Israel. As well, the November 1973 call, issued by the Front in the occupied territories, was equally concrete. In its twelfth session (June 1974), the Palestine National Council confirmed the transitional program under the title: "The Ten Points Program," which after the fourteenth session (January 1979) became the program which had Palestinian national consensus, for a decade and a half, until the signing of the Oslo Agreement (September 13, 1993).